to the commercial interests of the
country, by the establishment of the Institution proposed, than its
support would cost to the nation on its most extended scale.

Actuated by these impressions, I have sought by every argument to rouse
the dormant energies of a brave and a humane people to the rescue of
their fellow-creatures; and through the ardent zeal, the generous
enterprise, and the liberal bounty of a great nation, to awaken every
feeling which can stimulate to the effort, and provide every means which
can insure its success.

In our great insular empire, almost all individuals, from the most
exalted and powerful in the land to the lowly and obscure, are at some
period of their lives induced, by their various avocations and
pursuits, to leave their own coasts. The brave seamen, the gallant
soldiers, and the various subjects of these realms, of all ranks and
degrees, are to be found traversing every stormy sea, and exposed to
peril on every dangerous shore. This is not then an object for which the
great and the affluent are called on for the relief of the humble and
the destitute alone--the cause is individual, national, and universal,
perhaps beyond any other which has ever yet been addressed to a country
for support. It appeals equally to personal interest and to national
policy--to private benevolence and to public justice; and each who thus
extends the benefits of his efforts and his bounty to his countrymen and
to mankind, may also be contributing to the future safety of his family,
his friends, or himself.

In the pursuit of this arduous undertaking, I have felt it to be a duty
I owed to the cause of which I have thus become an advocate, to offer my
views to those of every class and department, who, from their humanity,
their talents, or their station, are the most calculated, or the best
enabled, to promote this great object of national benevolence.

I have dedicated this cause, with all deference, to a most gracious
sovereign; I have addressed myself in its behalf to his ministers; and I
have appealed to various distinguished individuals, to almost all the
great national and benevolent institutions in the kingdom, to the
commercial and shipping interests, and to the public at large, for the
support of an object well worthy the deep attention of the greatest
naval power of the present or of any former age, for the rescue of her
numerous seamen and subjects from one of the most frequent and most
awful o